Since Trump is only look­ing at a nar­row range of con­tenders, Gin­grich of­fers a great deal of up­side. He brings the Wash­ing­ton ex­per­i­ence that Trump says he val­ues, with the un­pre­dict­ab­il­ity that matches Trump’s per­son­al­ity. His pen­chant for con­trari­an­ism might be a head­ache for a more tra­di­tion­al can­did­ate, but for Trump his pres­ence on the tick­et could add grav­itas. In many ways, he is ex­actly what Trump needs right now. The mood of the coun­try should fa­vor the party out of power, but Trump is widely con­sidered un­suit­able for the pres­id­ency and he needs someone to shore up his weak­nesses.

Gin­grich’s de­tract­ors point to his low fa­vor­ab­il­ity rat­ings after he ex­ited the Re­pub­lic­an primary in 2012. But that was right after he was sub­jec­ted to non­stop at­tack ads from the Rom­ney camp without hav­ing the re­sources to fight back. Four years later, he’ll be in great­er con­trol of his own im­age. If he makes in­clus­ive com­ments as he did about Afric­an-Amer­ic­ans’ per­spect­ive of poli­cing, he’ll have a chance to turn around his own im­age and soften Trump’s rough edges. But if he rambles on about fu­tur­ism in­stead of stay­ing on mes­sage, he would risk be­ing dis­missed as a flake.

It’s not as if Gin­grich’s rivals for the tick­et are more pop­u­lar. Pence’s job ap­prov­al was a me­diocre 42 per­cent in the NBC/Mar­ist poll con­duc­ted be­fore the state’s May primary, with 41 per­cent dis­ap­prov­ing. (One rumored reas­on for his in­terest in the Trump tick­et is the fear that he’d lose his reelec­tion bid.) New Jer­sey Gov. Chris Christie is in worse shape. A re­cent Fair­leigh Dickin­son poll showed his job ap­prov­al at 26 per­cent, with dis­ap­prov­al at 62 per­cent—even worse than Trump’s dis­mal num­bers. Gin­grich, be­ing out of polit­ics for sev­er­al years, has a much more mal­le­able pub­lic im­age.